Challenge Anastasia!!
Hi there! I have a task for you today. I have accumulated all the ‘rat’ related idioms and expressions I know and have made a list of them below. What I challenge you to do is to write a paragraph or two including all the idioms/expressions, making sure that your writing is correct and makes sense. The writing doesn’t have to be related to your blog, you can make up a fictional story if it is easier to incorporate the idioms this way. Have a go, see how you fare!!-
To rat on somebody
‘Oh rats!’
The rat race
Like a drowned rat
To smell a rat
Ratbag
To be in a ratty mood
Chinese New Year was mental !!!The fireworks started at about 7pm and continued without letting up until about 3am. It was pure cacophony all night. We took Teah outside so that she could look at the fireworks and there were fireworks going off continually in every direction we could see. Teah ‘ohhed and ahhed’ at every firework shower and shouted ‘flower’ at the patterns in the sky. In her mind, the sky must have been full of pretty flowers instead of firework cascades!!
The next morning, I was rudely awoken by a series of firecrackers going off just outside my balcony window at 7am and when I went outside the streets were totally littered with the red paper casing of the fireworks strewn everywhere. It looked like red confetti covering the whole city. Amid such noise, ironically Beijing is kind of a ghost town in some ways, streets empty, very few cars and taxis, many restaurants and bars closed for a week. For such an over populated city, it’s pretty weird to see it become relatively deserted for a few days.
I read your blog about your time in the UK with interest and feel proud that you liked my country so much because I just love Blighty and all the people who live there. You were there during the floods of ‘summer’ 2007.(it was officially summertime but the weather did not live up to the expectations one has of summer)My home town is not that far from Bristol by car and our county had severe flash flooding, just to give you an idea, I’ve attached some photos.
These pictures show the high street in my town, Droitwich Spa, after one night of torrential rain. As you can see, all the shops are flooded and everything ruined. There was about 15 feet of rain that night. My advice to you Anastasia is never to trust a British summer and always pack your umbrella when you go to the UK (wellies sometimes are handy too!!)British summers, when the sun shines on all that green lush countryside, are totally glorious but last year was a ‘washout’, you hit the nail on the head with your vocabulary choice there!
Perhaps you could just look at the following sentences and tell me how they could be improved (all from the blog ‘A Washout of a Summer’).
1) I was to discover later that it had never been the summer’s plan to stay in the UK for the three month I had been going to spend there.
2) Just to name, in the UK I saw hairs, squirrels (in abundance), foxes, bats, reindeer, seals and rabbits.
3) - so extremely self-conscious I felt!
4) This photo was taken on the Hebridean Isle of North Uist of the western group of Scottish islands, if I am not confusing anything.
And these from ‘Hairy hares’…
5) Haven’t still managed to take advantage of it.
6) I did hear about IELTS, how many are there such centres in China?
7) my advice for you will be to come here in the summer season
8) It’s what buildings look like in the city centre.
I’m off out now to a festival in a park near my home for Chinese New Year, taking my camera so I can show you all what it was like!!
Until next time… have a good weekend one and all
PS Is the guy third from the left(in the photo you posted) your boyfriend?)! Just a wild guess...
Vocabulary
accumulate (v) gather together
how you fare make progress
mental (adj.) crazy
cacophany (n) loud, unpleasant mixture of sounds
cascades(n) waterfall, something that falls down like a waterfall
strewn(v) scattered
confetti (n) small pieces of coloured paper thrown over bride and groom at a wedding
ghost town deserted place, very few people
Blighty (n) slang word for Britain
torrential (adj) extremely heavy rain
wellies (n) short word for Wellington boots
lush (adj) growing thich and strong
hit the nail on the head express the truth precisely
one and all everyone
Comments
Hi, Trudy. The grand finale of a firework display is called 'bouquet final' in French, so Teah shares the idea of flowers in the sky with French people.
Dear Trudi, I have tried to use some of the idioms/expressions in a potted story which goes as follows: Mr. X is a successful businessman. One day he decided to visit some foreign countries on business trips this summer. When Mr. X met concerned officer to arrange his travel documents, he saw his cousin was staying with that officer. Mr. X thought that this ratbag was conspiring against him that is his cousin has ratted on him. Mr. X. doubt was based on solid foundation because this was not the first time he smelled rat, it had happened so many times. Then he decided to teach him a lesson and made a solid proof plan. He trapped his cousin in his plan. After this successful operation his cousin look like a drowned rat and decided to get out of the rat race. In a ratty mood, his cousin left their hometown and started a new business in somewhere else.
Dear Trudi, I’ll start with a confession – I’m addicted to googling. It’s so exciting, especially when you have to do it under the cover of darkness to avoid any threatening. Just imagine me flowing through the keyboard and drumming a rapid tattoo with my back feet when discovering something extra. But this time, when I accidentally googled your blog, was different. My hair stood on end, my magnificent tail got tangled up in wires – a total disaster!!! And all that just because my specie name was mentioned 8 (eight!) times in a rather agitating context. I’m not stupid as some of you might think, and no doubt that I’m a very sophisticated creature – I can quite easily smell between the lines that someone is trying to insinuate something here. Yes, I know, we are not perfect, but how about tactful honesty … After all we are all mammals!!!!! Yours still faithful, Rat
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